I use BuzzSumo to find a publication that republishes content for which the piece would be a great fit. I change around 20% of the article and update the headline, and republish the piece on that publication:

I include a link to my landing page with my content upgrade in my author bio:

And I enjoy email opt-ins…Without ever having to mess around with growing my website traffic. In fact, this helps me grow my traffic on autopilot.

Nifty, right?

Not every article I republish drives hundreds of email subscribers (sometimes they only bring in 20 or 100), but they do build backlinks and social proof and build awareness about my work.

Strategy #3: Answer Your Audience’s Most Burning Questions

Create a Quora profile including a relevant call to action to get your opt-in offer, like Josh Fetcher’s from Autopilot:

Begin answering questions that have a 7:1 ratio of followers to the number of answers provided, many followers (100+) with few answers or poorly written answers, and questions that you can add a personal image to:

Do not put links in your answer upfront (like the example above). This will be seen as spammy.

Instead, craft high-quality, well written answers to questions related to your industry. Don’t backlink until at least ⅔ of the way down your answer.

Strategy #5: Cultivate a Highly Engaged Group of Fans

Maybe that’s because you know the power of Facebook groups and want to grow your own. Smart cookie.

Starting your own Facebook group can be a huge driver of leads. Kimra Luna has quoted that her Facebook group drives 99% of her customers… and that’s on a 1.2 million dollar launch.

You can bet that most of those leads started as email subscribers who signed up through her group.

So if you’re starting a Facebook group, set it up to collect emails right away.

Pin a post about your opt-in offer to the top of the group:

Mention your offer in your group description:

And even in your group cover photo:

You can get your initial members by inviting people to the group through the “Add Members” function, or paying a small amount to boost the group in front of a targeted audience:

When we first started our private Sumo Facebook group, we spent $100 to boost it, which drove the first 100-150 members.

Remember -- these are 100-150 highly engaged target customers.

After you’ve engaged with your group and there’s active discussion, you can post call to action posts for your opt-in offer. Facebook groups are a huge asset for your business aside from the ability to collect email subscribers, but this is yet another benefit of them.

Strategy #9: Create Engaging Visual Content

If you have no traffic, you need to get in front of your audience where they already are… and hint: that’s not your website.

Enter SlideShare.

SlideShare is the #1 visual content marketing platform in the world driving over 70 million visitors per month, yet only 15% of marketers use it.

Eugene Cheng uses SlideShare to get over 400 new email subscribers per month, and you can, too.

First, set up a SlideShare account. SlideShare is owned by LinkedIn, so if you already have a LinkedIn profile, you can skip this.

Second, create a presentation on Google Slides. Use your most popular piece of content and break it into slides. If you don’t have any popular content, look at the most popular SlideShares in your industry to see what SlideShare’s audience is responding to:

Use these topics as inspiration for your first SlideShare.

Next, add a call to action to your content upgrade or opt-in offer to your SlideShare. You won’t get email subscribers if you don’t (you guessed it!) ask for emails.

Check out how Donna Moritz from Socially Sorted has done this on her SlideShare presentations as the call to action on her final two slides. First, she teases the call to action…

“Now that they are already committed to finding out by clicking, the next slide makes it more irresistible... The next slide gives the call to action 'Read More here and Grab Your Cheatsheet'.”

Have your viewers click onto a link directly to your landing page to get your freebie.

If you have a budget, you could use SlideShare’s paid account to directly integrate your email forms if you use Hubspot or Marketo. But instead, you could use this as an opportunity to drive traffic to your landing page or content and collect emails there.

Next, upload the SlideShare and do your best to promote it.

SlideShare acts as a search engine so you can get exposure to your presentation through that, but they also curate the top SlideShare’s on their homepage. If you land on that, it’s like hitting the traffic and subscriber jackpot.

Medium is a content publishing community that reaches a far bigger audience than yours:

Every month Medium users spend 4.5 million hours reading content on the platform

Medium sees around 60 million visitors a month.

There were 7.5 million posts published to Medium in 2016.

Not bad, right?

So to repurpose your content to Medium for email list growth, first, create a profile on Medium.

Then, choose your most popular piece of content to republish. In my example, I chose an article about becoming a digital nomad I wrote that was easily shareable and would go well on Medium.

Press the “Write a Story” button and copy and paste your popular content into the text box:

Change about 20% of the article, and the headline as well. Disperse links to your content throughout the article, and include a call to action to sign up for your email list:

Publish the article to go live on Medium, and do your best to promote it.

The more initial traction your article gets, the more likely you’ll end up on the Daily Digest for that specific topic. The Daily Digest is an email Medium sends out to any readers subscribed to the topic with links to the most popular content in that topic…

Which means you can reach thousands of topic subscribers (like the 3.9K on “Remote Work”):

So you will do best if you share the content to your social media platforms to try to generate some interest.

I did this as a test with just 29 pieces of content I shared on Twitter and Pinterestwhich brought in over 15 conversions directly from the Snip…

And some of the content I shared was my own, which led to even more conversions.

If you’re thinking this couldn’t possibly work because you have no social media following, you’re not thinking strategically enough.

When you’re sharing other people’s content you’re curating that content. If you’re using hashtags, tagging your location or using relevant keywords, some people will see your posts organically (yes, without even following you).

But what happens when you tag the content creator in the content you’re sharing?

You’re making them aware that you’ve shared their content. Which drastically increases the likelihood that they Retweet it, Repin it, or Share it themselves:

And they’ll usually do so with that original Snip.ly link you used, with your Snip at the bottom. Which means that those in their audience who see their post will see your Snip.

Do this for all the content you share related to your niche, and dominate.

Strategy #12: Get an Extra Boost With Facebook Ads

There are two ways to skin any online business cat:

Do the work

Put in the money

So if you want to harness the power of Facebook without putting in the elbow grease, of course you could just throw a bit of money at it and grow your email list with Facebook ads.

So if you have more money than time right now, consider creating an ad for your opt-in offer that drives traffic to your landing page, where you can capture those visitor’s emails and communicate with them forever more.

Strategy #13: Run a Free Webinar

In 2017, video outperforms almost every other content medium available.

And webinars are essentially just live videos teaching your audience something specific.

Webinars work like crazy to drive sales, establish massive authority in your niche… plus they can grow your email list like crazy. Elna Cain’s first webinar generated over 370 new email subscribers, and her second one was even more successful at 1,200 subscribers (and this was for a four month old website).

First, choose a webinar topic. The best way to go about this is to present on the most popular piece of content you’ve created:

And choose that as your topic for your webinar. If you don’t have any popular content, Use Buzzsumo.com to look up the most popular articles on a competitors’ site.

Break it into slides:

And create a simple registration landing page:

Protip: To grow your email list even faster, co-present your webinar with somebody else in your niche. You can both promote to whatever existing audience you have and share the email subscribers.

Promote your webinar during the days prior:

Post it several times on social media

If you have a budget, put some cheap Facebook ads behind it

Share it in Facebook groups, asking permission first from the group owner

Use Strategy #11 to get email subscribers just from sharing other people’s content.

You can even ask influencers in your niche to share it, but if you do this, please be clear that you are not selling anything on the webinar.

You should see at least a small boost in your email subscribers.

Protip: Record your webinar and use it as an opt-in offer after you’ve completed it.

Stop Waiting for the Traffic Fairy to Leave Email Subscribers Under Your Pillow

But you probably thought the “no traffic” excuse was a legitimate reason to procrastinate on growing your list.

Until now.

Now you know 15 strategies you can use to grow your email list even if your Google Analytics looks emptier than a bar on Sunday morning.

So no more excuses. Choose one of the strategies I gave you above and begin to implement it today.

Start small and work your way up to the strategies like guest posting, republishing and giveaways.

And don’t forget…

Your email list will be one of the biggest and most engaged traffic sources for your website (not to mention the most lucrative source of sales and revenue). So focus on this before you start chasing traffic.

Get your next 100 subscribers (or more) with our FREE list building masterclass.